Trusting the Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance Read online

  Instead, he had panicked. Turned away.

  Abandoned her.

  What else could he do? He was a shifter, his human self inextricably bound up with his tiger self. And she was a human. He’d heard of shifters pairing up with humans before, hiding their true selves, but he’d never heard of it working out in the end.

  After all, what would she say if he told her his secret: that he could transform into a massive tiger? That the tiger was a part of him? She would think he was crazy. And if he did shift in front of her, he would be lucky if she didn’t run away screaming.

  Jack sighed. He had thought it was his lucky day, but of course it would turn out to be just his same old bad luck. It was true what he had told Toni. His job had taken him all over the world. But that wasn’t the whole truth.

  His main mission had been to extend his trust’s land holdings – keeping vital habitats safe and untouched for local wildlife – but in the back of his mind all that time he had hoped he might find her on his travels. His one. His mate.

  God knows he had looked. For ten years, Jack had introduced himself to shifter clans the world over, from a caribou shifter tribe in the north to a small colony of penguin shifters in icy Antarctica. He must have met every eligible shifter woman from here to Timbuktu. And now, after he had finally given up hope that there was a woman out there meant for him…

  A human. A perfect, beautiful, funny human. So now his choice was between being with his mate, but never being himself with her – or staying alone.

  Jack had fuzzy childhood memories of asking his parents about how they met, what it was like. They had told him that finding your mate was meant to be like finding a missing part of yourself, but how could that happen if he had to hide part of himself to be with her? And could she really be happy with someone who couldn’t trust her with his whole self?

  “…you’re not listening to a thing I’m saying, are you?” Karen snapped her fingers in front of Jack’s eyes. “Wakey, wakey, big fella.”

  He blinked. “No, I was…”

  Karen snorted. “Don’t try telling me you were listening. I just said ‘You’re not listening to a thing I’m saying’ about ten times before you clicked. You were miles away.”

  “Not miles away,” Jack admitted gruffly.

  Karen was one of his oldest friends. Jack had bought the land around the old Silver mine ten years ago – one of his earliest projects with the trust – and she had stuck to him ever since, like a leggy blonde burr. And not in a romantic way. It turned out that she had been bringing classes from underprivileged schools out here on the sly for camping trips for the past several years, and was adamant she be allowed to keep doing so, preferably with some official funding.

  Jack had been happy to set aside some of the land for a proper camping and recreation ground. As well as being a refuge for wildlife, the park would be a place for children to learn about the land. A place of knowledge, and learning. And, sometimes, BMXing.

  Jack forced himself back to the present. Karen was looking past him, back across the picnic area.

  “Not ‘miles away,’ huh?” she said dryly. “I thought you came stampeding over to me a bit faster than usual. Don’t act too coy, though. It looks like you’re not the only competitor in the field.”

  Jack spun around, his tiger roaring inside him, teeth bared. He wasn’t a jealous guy – at least, he had never been a jealous guy before now – but the hairs on his arms prickled as he looked across at Toni and the man standing over her.

  His first impulse was to storm over there and tell the guy where to go. He held himself back. He didn’t have any claim over Toni, particularly if he was deciding to ignore the mate bond and stay out of her life. He had no right to get angry over other men talking to her.

  There was a sudden movement; as Jack watched, his shifter eyes picking up every detail, something slipped from the man’s grip and fell to the ground. Jack had the strange feeling that whatever-it-was had been dropped deliberately, but the thought had barely crossed his mind when Toni bent to catch the object, and then dropped it with a cry, as though it had stung her.

  She cradled her hand, pain flitting across her face.

  Jack didn’t hesitate any longer. He covered the distance between then in a handful of long strides. Closer, he could clearly see the discomfort in Toni’s face and stance. It wasn’t just her injured hand; his tiger’s senses, more attuned than his human ones, zeroed in on her tightened nostrils, fast breathing and the tense muscles in her neck. She was more than just uncomfortable. She was on the edge of panic.

  Toni’s eyes jerked toward him as he approached and filled with an unmistakable look of relief. That was all the invitation he needed.

  Jack stepped in beside Toni, sliding one arm behind her to rest reassuringly on her lower back. He felt her lean backwards into him, almost unnoticeably, the slightest pressure on his hand.

  “Everything okay here?” he said calmly, though every muscle in his body was coiled to strike.

  The man was glaring bullets at Jack. A faint memory stirred in the back of Jack’s mind. Had he met this guy before?

  “That thing shocked me,” Toni snapped at the stranger.

  The man smiled, a smooth, easy expression that Jack didn’t trust an inch. “As I was saying before we were interrupted, Toni, it must have been static electricity—”

  “Oh, come on,” Toni scoffed. “Static electricity? I’ve got a niece and a nephew who’re both obsessed with pranking each other. Trust me, I know what static electricity feels like. It doesn’t hurt that much, and it sure as hell doesn’t leave a mark.”

  She held out her hand. The tips of her middle and index fingers were an angry red, as though they had been burned.

  Jack felt a growl start to build in his chest.

  The stranger either didn’t notice Jack’s rising anger, or didn’t care. He looked at Toni’s fingers and an entirely unconvincing expression of sympathy arranged itself on his face.

  “Oh, dear. I’ve a first-aid kit back with the rest of my gear, Toni, if you’ll follow me…”

  “We’ve got plenty of medical supplies back at the truck,” Jack interrupted, almost spitting the words. “She doesn’t need to follow you anywhere.”

  Jack stepped forward, his arm still curved protectively around Toni. He topped the other man by over a head. It wasn’t hard to stare him down when he was literally staring down at him, though he would have much preferred to straight-up stamp him into the dirt.

  His tiger was spoiling for a fight – and not just his tiger. This was one thing both halves of him agreed on.

  Come on, you bastard, talk back. Give me one reason to knock you down.

  The enraging, vapid smile returned to the man’s face. “I guess I’ll just see you around the camp, then.”

  “Guess again,” Toni said crisply, before Jack could get a word in. “You – oh, just go away, would you,” she finished, her voice trembling. Jack could feel her body still slightly shaking against his.

  The other man still seemed oblivious to the antipathy both she and Jack felt for him. “Until we meet again, then,” he said mildly, and set off slowly.

  Toni raised one hand to his retreating back. “An apology would be nice!” she yelled, to no response. They both watched silently as he disappeared between the trees.

  Jack felt Toni droop, tension leaving her body in a rush. “Oh, what the hell was that about?” she stormed, and turned to him with her eyes blazing. “I don’t think much of your friends, Jack.”

  “Who, that guy? I’ve never seen him before in my life.” Jack paused, that faint memory flickering again. “At least … I don’t think…”

  Toni glared. “He said his name’s Andre de Jager. And that you and he go way back.”

  De Jager…

  Images flashed in Jack’s mind as memories he’d tried to forget rose to the surface. Wide, empty tundra. The hot, hot sun of South Africa. Weeks spent negotiating with local authorities. And then, mere ho
urs before the conservation pledge was to be signed…

  Blood pooled on the ground, sticky and red. Flies already buzzing in hordes over the bodies, and the stench of death thick in the air.

  A group of local rich kids had objected to the conservation agreement. De Jager was the ringleader, a spoiled, entitled prick who thought the only good thing about the wilderness was that it was full of creatures he could kill. Faced with the ban on all hunting in the region, he and his friends had decided to see the season out with wholesale slaughter.

  They’d piled their trophies directly in front of the governer’s house where the agreement was being signed. Jack had walked out of what was meant to be his first big success for the trust, straight into a vision from hell.

  And now, ten years later, de Jager was here. Why?

  “You do know him,” Toni accused, her eyes narrowing.

  “Yes. But he’s not a friend. Not even close.” Quickly, Jack explained how he knew de Jager, and what the man had done. Toni’s expression went from suspicious to horrified.

  “But what’s he doing here? It’s not hunting season,” she said, astounded. “There’s no big game in the park anyway, is there?”

  “No big game,” Jack agreed, “and no hunting, period. This whole place is a nature preserve.”

  “You don’t think this could be some sort of revenge thing, do you?” Toni suggested cautiously.

  Jack shrugged. “It’s been ten years, and he hasn’t caused any trouble at the preserve in South Africa in all that time. He was just a kid back then, and you know, people do change.”

  He didn’t believe what he was saying himself, and Toni was shaking her head slowly.

  “No … he seemed … wrong.” She shivered, and Jack saw her eyes flicker across to the jump ramps. Two dark-haired, blue-eyed children, a boy and a girl, were egging each other on under Karen’s amused supervision. They must be Toni’s niece and nephew, he realized. And de Jager had freaked her out badly enough that she was worried about them.

  A sudden protective urge rose up in him. Whatever reason de Jager had for coming here, Jack would deal with it, but he wouldn’t put up with his frightening Toni and her family.

  “I’ll make sure the park rangers are on the lookout for him,” he said aloud. “And that they’re to throw him out on sight. If he wants to see me, he can make an appointment through my EA, like everyone else.”

  Toni cracked a weak smile. “He must be bad, if you’re willing to plan a work meeting to get him out of your hair.”

  She hugged herself, looking so anxious and miserable even through her brave smile that Jack couldn’t hold himself back anymore. He wanted more than anything to gather her in his arms right then and there, sweep her away to his house deep in the forest, keep her safe – anything to banish that hunted look from her eyes.

  He was under no illusions that sweeping Toni off her feet right now would more be more likely to scare her than comfort her. He made up his mind.

  “Look,” he began, stumbling over his words. “I’m really sorry about all this. This is meant to be your weekend getaway, and instead … well, it doesn’t seem like you’re having a great time. And you should be. Let me make it up to you.”

  “Well, you got me a drink,” Toni replied with a straight face. They both looked down to where her Coke lay spilled on the ground, next to Jack’s beer.

  “Right. And then I ran off and left you to be stalked by a weirdo from my past. So I owe you twice,” Jack offered.

  “Maybe three times, if you count organizing this BMX thing that has stolen Felix and Lexi’s sporty little hearts,” Toni added.

  “Two and a half,” Jack countered. “I provided the campground, but Karen’s one-hundred-percent to blame for the bikes.”

  “Deal.” A smile – a real one, this time – twitched at the corner of her mouth, and she held out one hand. “Shake on it?”

  They shook, both giving the action the mock seriousness it deserved.

  “First things first, let’s get you to that first-aid station,” Jack decided. “Your fingers – hang on, was it the other hand?”

  Toni stared at her fingers. “No, it was definitely this hand…” She flexed her fingers experimentally. “Wow, the marks have faded really fast.”

  “Does it still hurt?”

  “No, it’s … fine.” She frowned. “Weird.”

  Jack gently took her hand and examined it. Five minutes ago, her fingertips had been a painful-looking red, as though she had touched a hotplate, but now there was no sign anything had ever been wrong. Toni’s fingers were unharmed, soft, delicate, and as beautiful as the rest of her.

  With his shifter senses, Jack felt Toni’s heartbeat quicken. Her fingers started to curl around his own, and then she pulled back self-consciously.

  Jack’s own body was responding to her excitement. He coughed, willing himself to calm down. Then inspiration struck.

  “I’ve got it. With your niece and nephew up to their eyeballs in dirt bikes, your plans for the weekend are probably shot, right?” He took in her glum nod. “Then let me make it up to you. How do you feel about joining me on a picnic tomorrow?”

  Toni looked up at him, and the tentative hope in her eyes made his heart swell in his chest.

  “I’d … I’d like that,” she said, the words tripping over each other. “I’d really like that.”

  The sun had crept toward the horizon as they talked, so Jack offered to help herd the twins back to the cabins once the bikes were packed away for the day. Lexi and Felix – he made a mental note to ask Toni about the names – hardly touched the ground the whole way back to the camping ground. They clambered up trees and jumped across rock piles. He couldn’t help but think that Toni would hardly have had a relaxing weekend if she had to look after the two of them the whole time. He left them madly waving to him from the cabin door, and turned to start the long walk through the trees to his own home.

  There was no sign of de Jager, but then he had stalked off in the opposite direction to the cabins. If he was staying in the campground, he must have his own tent somewhere off the beaten track. He hadn’t been lying when he told Toni he doubted de Jager was up to anything, but even so, knowing how much the man had unnerved her, he pulled out his phone and rang the head ranger to let him know bad news was skulking around.

  CHAPTER THREE

  TONI

  “You two are filthy,” Toni grumbled as Lexi and Felix stripped off their sweaters to reveal sub-strata of dirt. “Right, grab your shower kits, and let’s get to the showers before everyone else descends on them.”

  “Not gonna!” crowed Lexi. Before Toni could so much as tssk the small girl began to shrink and twist inside her clothes. Her sleek brown hair shrank down and then seemed to stream across her skin. Moments later a lithe, chocolate-brown Burmese kitten wriggled out from the pile of clothing. Lexi the human might have been covered in muck, but Lexi the cat was spotless, her fur gleaming. She stretched out one paw and licked it smugly.

  “You mean you leave it all over the floor.” Toni sighed. Her eyes had automatically flicked to the window as Lexi began to shift, checking that the curtains were safely drawn and no one could see in.

  She picked up the pile of clothes, shook the loose dirt from them, and then started to hunt around for a broom to sweep the mess out the door. “Felix, why don’t we…”

  Too late. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Felix drop to the floor, but the cat that emerged from this pile of clothing was far less sleek than his sister. While Lexi had managed to shift out of her coating of dirt as well as her clothes, Felix wasn’t so lucky.

  “Oh, Felix.” She sighed sympathetically. “Do not try to lick that all off yourself, you’ll make yourself sick. Come here. I’ll brush you down.”

  He meekly jumped on her lap as she sat down with the brush. Toni secretly suspected that the boy could shift as well as her sister, but he liked being brushed more than he li
ked showing off. Lexi prowled around the room as Toni groomed dirt out of her brother’s hair.

  Toni kept finding herself glancing nervously at the door. She was still on edge from her encounter with de Jager earlier, and Jack’s story about how he had deliberately hunted down all those soon-to-be-protected animals in Africa had only added to her bad feelings.

  She shivered. Poor Jack. That event must have happened pretty early on in his career. To have someone deliberately, savagely sabotage your life’s work like that … it must have been horrific. But he had kept going. He hadn’t let de Jager scare him away from his passion.

  Toni straightened her shoulders. She wouldn’t let de Jager get to her, either. Screw him. Anyway, she had far nicer things to think about. Things like…

  Her mind instantly drifted back to Jack Silver. In less than half an hour, Jack had charmed her, deserted her, and come to her rescue. She was still confused, and a little hurt, by how he had run off, but the way he had come back to defend her the moment that creep had cornered her … it made her heart flutter.

  He had been so concerned for her safety, and the children’s. Where even the thought of de Jager sent a shudder down her spine, thinking about Jack made a warm glow spread through her whole body. And ever since they had parted, in every spare moment her mind had started drifting back to memories of his eyes, his lips, his body – actually, drifting was a poor word for it. It was more like he was a whirlpool, and she was caught in the current. Even when they had been discussing that monster de Jager, she had felt her body leaning in to Jack, as though magnetically attracted.

  Toni sighed. It had been so long since she last had a boyfriend, her body was clearly going into crush overdrive. And maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Maybe a little picnic-based flirting was just what she needed.

  Jack might be more interested in her as a worried park guest than a potential fling, but spending time with him would hardly be a chore. And the way he had reacted to de Jager that afternoon, if he turned up to make trouble, Jack would soon run him off.

  Tomorrow was going to be a good day. She knew it. Well … she hoped it. Very strongly.